The present invention relates to methods of adaptive adjustment of PMD compensators in optical fiber communication systems. The present invention also relates to a compensator in accordance with said method.
In optical fiber telecommunications equipment the need to compensate the effects of polarization mode dispersion (PMD) which occur when an optical signal travels in an optical fiber based connection is known.
It is known that PMD causes distortion and dispersion of optical signals sent over optical fiber connections malting the signals distorted and dispersed. The different time delays among the various signal components in the various polarization states acquire increasing importance with the increase in transmission speeds. In modern optical fiber based transmission systems with ever higher frequencies (10 Gbit/s and more), accurate compensation of PMD effects becomes very important and delicate. This compensation must be dynamic and performed at adequate speed.